The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people
#30351
Margaret Drugovich
#30363
Overall Influence
Margaret L. Drugovich is an American academic administrator and healthcare policy researcher who is currently serving as interim president of Marietta College. She previously served as the 10th president of Hartwick College from 2008 to 2022.
Go to Profile#30352
Jeffrey Checkel
#30364
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jeffrey T. Checkel is an American academic associated with the theory of constructivist school of international relations. He is currently professor and chair in International Politics at the European University Institute, Florence.
Go to Profile#30353
Anita Ekberg
#30365
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was a Swedish actress active in American and European films, known for her beauty and curvy figure. She became prominent in her iconic role as Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita . Ekberg worked primarily in Italy, where she became a permanent resident in 1964.
Go to Profile#30354
Bo Lawergren
#30366
Overall Influence
Bo Lawergren is a Professor Emeritus of physics at Hunter College, The City University of New York. He is also a music archaeologist. He received his PhD in nuclear physics from the Australian National University of Canberra, Australia.
Go to Profile#30355
Buck Showalter
#30367
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
William Nathaniel "Buck" Showalter III is an American professional baseball manager. He served as manager of the New York Yankees , Arizona Diamondbacks , Texas Rangers , Baltimore Orioles and New York Mets . He also is a former professional Minor League Baseball player and television analyst for ESPN and the YES Network.
Go to Profile#30356
Aleksey Malashenko
#30368
Overall Influence
1951 - 2023 (72 years)
Aleksey Vsevolodovich Malashenko was a Russian academic and political scientist. He specialized in the oriental and Islamic studies. He was the son of actress . Biography Malashenko graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries in 1974 with a degree in history. In 1972, he studied in Egypt and Turkmenistan. From 1974 to 1976, he served in the Soviet Armed Forces in Algeria. He was a researcher at Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1976 to 1982. In 1978, he defended his dissertation on Islam in Algeria.
Go to Profile#30357
Michel Broué
#30369
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Michel Broué is a French mathematician. He holds a chair at Paris Diderot University. Broué has made contributions to algebraic geometry and representation theory. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#30358
Kang-i Sun Chang
#30370
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Kang-i Sun Chang , is a Chinese-born American sinologist. She is a scholar of classical Chinese literature. She is the inaugural Malcolm G. Chace Professor, and former chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.
Go to Profile#30359
Richard Herman
#30371
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Richard H. Herman is a former mathematician who had served as the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2005-2009. He previously served there as Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs since 1998. As provost he garnered support for, and administered, a “faculty excellence” program designed to bring established faculty to the institution. Over the course of his administrative tenure, sponsored research at the university increased by more than 50%.
Go to Profile#30360
Suman Datta
#30372
Overall Influence
Suman Datta is an Indian born American engineer. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Joseph M. Pettit Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, he was the Stinson Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Notre Dame. Between 2007 and 2015, he was a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State University. He was a Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation from 1999 to 2007.
Go to Profile#30361
Rishi Kapoor
#30373
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Rishi Raj Kapoor was an Indian actor, film director, and producer who worked in Hindi films. He was the recipient of several accolades, including a National Film Award and four Filmfare Awards, in a career that spanned 50 years.
Go to Profile#30362
Judith Fetterley
#30374
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Judith Fetterley is a literary scholar known for her work in feminism and women's studies. She was influential in leading a reappraisal of women's literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the contributions of women writing about women's experience, including their perspectives on men in the world.
Go to Profile#30363
Niall Quinn
#30375
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Niall John Quinn is an Irish former professional footballer, manager, businessman and sports television pundit. As a player he was a striker who played top flight football for Arsenal, Manchester City and Sunderland, with spells in the Premier League for both City and the Black Cats. Quinn also received 92 caps for the Republic of Ireland national football team, scoring 21 times, which makes him Ireland's second highest goalscorer of all time. He also appeared with the Irish team at the UEFA European Football Championship of 1988 and two FIFA World Cups in 1990 and 2002.
Go to Profile#30364
Bert F. Hoselitz
#30376
Overall Influence
1913 - 1995 (82 years)
Berthold Frank Hoselitz taught Economics and Social Science at the University of Chicago between 1945 and 1978. His analysis of the role of cultural and sociological factors in economic development was influential and contrasted to Chicago School models of self-interested maximizing behavior. Hoselitz was the founding editor of Economic Development and Cultural Change, a prominent journal in the new research field of economic development. At the Carnegie Institute of Technology Hoselitz taught a course in international economics in 1947–48 that was the only economics course that future Nobel ...
Go to Profile#30365
Thomas Joiner
#30377
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Thomas Joiner is an American academic psychologist and leading expert on suicide. He is the Robert O. Lawton Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, where he operates his Laboratory for the Study of the Psychology and Neurobiology of Mood Disorders, Suicide, and Related Conditions. He is author of Why People Die by Suicide and Myths about Suicide , and the current editor-in-chief of Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior.
Go to Profile#30366
Heather Mallick
#30378
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Heather Mallick is a Canadian columnist, author and lecturer. She has been a staff columnist for the Toronto Star since 2010, writing a news column on Saturday and on the opinion page on Monday and Wednesday. She writes about feminism, news and politics. She has previously written for the Toronto Sun, The Globe and Mail, and the Financial Post.
Go to Profile#30367
Patricia Buckley Ebrey
#30379
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Patricia Buckley Ebrey is an American art historian and sinologist specializing in cultural and gender issues during the Chinese Song Dynasty. Ebrey obtained her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1968 and her Masters and PhD from Columbia University in 1970 and 1975, respectively. Upon receiving her PhD, Ebrey was hired as visiting assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She became an associate professor in 1982 and a full professor three years later. Subsequently, in 1997, she accepted a Professor of History position at the University of Washington, from which she retired in July 2020.
Go to Profile#30368
Lucie Hradecká
#30380
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Lucie Hradecká is a Czech former professional tennis player. A three-time Grand Slam doubles champion and 26-time WTA Tour doubles titlist, she reached her career-high doubles ranking of world No. 4 in October 2012. She was also an integral member of the Czech Republic's national team and helped her country to win five titles at the Fed Cup between 2011 and 2016, in addition to winning two Olympic medals in both women's doubles with Andrea Sestini Hlaváčková in 2012 and in mixed doubles with Radek Štěpánek in 2016. Hradecká also reached the top 45 in singles and was a finalist in seven tour-level singles tournaments.
Go to Profile#30369
Bernard E. Trainor
#30381
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Bernard E. Trainor was an American journalist and a United States Marine Corps lieutenant general. He served in the Marine Corps for 39 years in both staff and command capacities. After retiring from the Marine Corps, he began working as the chief military correspondent for The New York Times. He was subsequently a military analyst for NBC. With Michael R. Gordon, he was the author of three accounts of American wars in Iraq, The Generals War ; Cobra II ; and Endgame .
Go to Profile#30370
Javaid Rehman
#30382
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Javaid Rehman is a British-Pakistani legal scholar and Professor of Islamic Law and International Law at Brunel University London. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran On 7 July 2018, he was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran. On 6 August 2018, Javaid Rehman, wrote to the Iranian Government expressing his interest in visiting Iran. He said he had already received a number of reports raising concerns about alleged violations of human rights in the country. He commenced his duties officially on 13 July 2018.
Go to Profile#30371
Graham Norton
#30383
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Graham William Walker , better known by his stage name Graham Norton, is an Irish comedian, actor, author, and television host known for his work in the UK. He is a five-time BAFTA TV Award winner for his comedy chat show The Graham Norton Show and an eight-time award-winner overall—he received the British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance three times for So Graham Norton . Originally shown on BBC Two before moving to other slots on BBC One, his chat show succeeded Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in BBC One's prestigious late-Friday-evening slot in 2010.
Go to Profile#30372
Kevin Karplus
#30384
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Kevin Karplus is a professor emeritus at University of California, Santa Cruz, currently in the Biomolecular Engineering Department. He is probably best known for work he did as a computer science graduate student at Stanford University on the Karplus–Strong string synthesis algorithm.
Go to Profile#30373
Dan Hicks
#30385
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John Daniel Hicks is an American sportscaster for NBC Sports since 1992. Early years Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Hicks graduated from Sabino High School in 1980 and from the University of Arizona in 1984. After starting in radio, he was a weekend sports anchor on KVOA, the NBC affiliate in Tucson. Hicks moved east to work as a sports reporter for CNN in Atlanta in 1989 and went to NBC Sports in 1992.
Go to Profile#30374
Dennis Bray
#30386
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Dennis Bray is an active emeritus professor at University of Cambridge. His group is also part of the Oxford Centre for Integrative Systems Biology. After a first career in Neurobiology, working on cell growth and movement, Dennis Bray moved in Cambridge to develop computational models of cell signaling, in particular in relation to bacterial chemotaxis.
Go to Profile#30375
Althea Gibson
#30387
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam event . The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals , then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived", said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams.
Go to Profile#30376
Jean-Baptiste Waldner
#30388
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jean-Baptiste Waldner is a French engineer, management consultant and author, known for his contributions in the fields of computer-integrated manufacturing, enterprise architecture, nanoelectronics, nanocomputers and swarm intelligence.
Go to Profile#30377
Masanobu Shinozuka
#30389
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Masanobu Shinozuka was a Japanese applied mechanics expert in earthquake and structural engineering. Shinozuka's research focuses on field theory and risk assessment methodology in civil engineering. His works have been applied numerously in earthquake engineering in buildings, bridges, lifeline and environmental systems.
Go to Profile#30378
Kalbe Razi Naqvi
#30390
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Kalbe Razi Naqvi is a British Pakistani-Norwegian physicist, who has been ordinarily resident in Norway since 1977, working as a professor of biophysics in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He retired at the end of June 2014, and is now a Prof. Emeritus in NTNU.
Go to Profile#30379
Tyson R. Roberts
#30391
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Tyson Royal Roberts is an American ichthyologist. He has been described as "the world's foremost authority on Regalecus". Roberts attended Stanford University, where he earned his B.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1968. His doctoral thesis was titled "Studies on the osteology and phylogeny of characoid fishes." He won a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of "Organismic Biology & Ecology", and is a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and is also affiliated to the Institute of Molecular Biosciences of Mahidol University, Thailand.
Go to Profile#30380
Mickie Most
#30392
Overall Influence
1938 - 2003 (65 years)
Michael Peter Hayes , known as Mickie Most, was an English record producer behind scores of hit singles for acts such as the Animals, Herman's Hermits, the Nashville Teens, Donovan, Lulu, Suzi Quatro, Hot Chocolate, Arrows, Racey and the Jeff Beck Group, often issued on his own RAK Records label.
Go to Profile#30381
Richard Sutch
#30393
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Richard Charles Sutch was a professor of economics at the University of California Riverside. He is noted for his work on the economic analysis of U.S. slavery and emancipation. He was awarded a "Clio" Award For Exceptional Support to the Field of Cliometrics, by the Cliometric Society and his work has received recognition by the Economic History Association via its awarding him the Arthur H. Cole Prize for the Outstanding Article in The Journal of Economic History. Over the period 1989-1990 he served as the president of the Economic History Association.
Go to Profile#30382
Jeremy D. Safran
#30394
Overall Influence
1952 - 2018 (66 years)
Jeremy David Safran was a Canadian-born American clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, lecturer, and psychotherapy researcher. He was a professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research, where he served for many years as director of clinical training. He was also a faculty member at New York University's postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis and The Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. He was co-founder and co-chair of The Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School for Social Research. In addition he was past-president of The International Association for Relational...
Go to Profile#30383
Charles Molnar
#30395
Overall Influence
1935 - 1996 (61 years)
Charles Edwin Molnar was a co-developer of one of the first minicomputers, the LINC , while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. His collaborator was Wesley A. Clark.
Go to Profile#30384
Juan Pablo Fusi
#30396
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurúa is a Spanish historian. He specialises in contemporary history, the Basque Country and nationalisms. Studies Fusi has a degree in history from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has a Ph.D. from the same university.
Go to Profile#30385
Lewis Yablonsky
#30397
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Lewis Yablonsky was an American sociologist, criminologist, author, and psychotherapist best known for his innovative and experiential work with gang members as well as with the Counterculture of the 1960s. He wrote seventeen books and taught for over thirty years at California State University, Northridge.
Go to Profile#30386
Douglas McCauley
#30398
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Douglas J. McCauley is a professor of ocean science at the University of California Santa Barbara, and serves as the Director of the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory - an applied ocean research center based at UC Santa Barbara's Marine Science Institute. His research focuses on using tools from ecology, data science, and marine policy for ocean conservation.
Go to Profile#30387
Lewis Hanke
#30399
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Lewis Hanke was an American historian of colonial Latin America, and is best known for his writings on the Spanish conquest of Latin America. Hanke, along with two others, Irving A. Leonard and John T. Lanning, presented a revisionist narrative of colonial history that focused on the role of Bartolomé de las Casas, who famously advocated for the rights of Native Americans, and searched for just resolutions to the tensions between the conquistadores and the natives during the colonial period of Spanish rule. Hanke's writings documented Las Casas' work as a political activist, historian, political theorist, and anthropologist.
Go to Profile#30388
Nigel Lockyer
#30400
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Nigel Stuart Lockyer is a British-American experimental particle physicist. He is the current director of the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education as of May 1, 2023. He was the Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , in Batavia, Illinois, the leading particle physics laboratory in the United States, from September 2013 to April 2022.
Go to Profile#30389
John Donvan
#30401
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Donvan is a journalist, broadcaster and debate moderator whose bestselling book, In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. He serves as host of Intelligence Squared U.S., a debate series dedicated to raising the level of public discourse in America.
Go to Profile#30390
James E. Thornton
#30402
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
James E. Thornton was an American computer engineer. Thornton studied electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota earning a bachelor's degree in 1950. Immediately afterwards he went to Engineering Research Associates , which was acquired by Remington Rand in 1952. In 1958 he left with other ERA engineers to form the new Control Data Corporation . He remained there until 1973 and was involved in the development of the CDC 1604, CDC 6600, 6400, 6500, and the STAR-100. With Seymour Cray, he was the main developer of the pioneering supercomputer CDC 6000, which came onto the market in 1...
Go to Profile#30391
Sapan Desai
#30403
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Sapan Sharankishor Desai is an American physician, and the owner of Surgisphere, originally a textbook marketing company that claimed to provide large sets of medical data on COVID-19 patients. This data and the research using it has been discredited, and two papers Desai co-authored that used this data were retracted after being published in prominent medical journals.
Go to Profile#30392
Georges C. Benjamin
#30404
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Georges C. Benjamin is an American public health official who has served as Executive Director of the American Public Health Association since 2002, and previously as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the Cabinet of Governor Parris Glendening from 1999 to 2002. He is a member of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. Benjamin is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Go to Profile#30393
Jorge Posada
#30405
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Jorge Rafael Posada Villeta is a Puerto Rican former professional baseball catcher who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. Posada recorded a .273 batting average, 275 home runs, and 1,065 runs batted in during his career. A switch hitter, Posada was a five-time All-Star, won five Silver Slugger Awards, and was on the roster for four World Series championship teams.
Go to Profile#30394
Deborah Willis
#30406
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Deborah Willis is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator of photography, photographic historian, author, and educator. Among her awards and honors, she is a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University.
Go to Profile#30395
Alberto Sordi
#30407
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Alberto Sordi was an Italian actor, comedian, director, singer, and screenwriter. Early life Born in Rome to a schoolteacher and a musician and the last of five children, Sordi was named in honour of an older sibling, who died several days after his birth. Sordi enrolled in Milan's dramatic arts academy but was kicked out because of his thick Roman accent. In the meantime, he studied to be a bass opera singer. His vocal distinctiveness would become his trademark.
Go to Profile#30396
Stephen T. Franklin
#30408
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Stephen T. Franklin is a Christian theologian and philosopher who is president emeritus of Tokyo Christian University. Franklin is one of the few evangelicals who is also a scholar of process theology; known for his research in the interaction of evangelical theology and process thought. Franklin is married to the former Martha Jean Evans, former associate professor of nursing at Shizuoka University in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.
Go to Profile#30397
Marcel van der Linden
#30409
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Marcel Marius van der Linden was director of research at the International Institute of Social History until 2014, is now Senior Researcher at the Institute, and also holds a professorship dedicated to the history of social movements at the University of Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#30398
George Perry
#30410
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
George Perry is a professor of biology and chemistry at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the former dean of the College of Sciences. Perry is recognized in the field of Alzheimer's disease research, particularly for his work on oxidative stress.
Go to Profile#30399
April Carter
#30411
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
April Carter was a British peace activist. She was a political lecturer at the universities of Lancaster, Somerville College, Oxford and Queensland, and was a Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute from 1985 to 1987. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Coventry University, and a 'senior editor' on the international editorial board for the International Encyclopedia of Peace to be published by Oxford University Press .
Go to Profile#30400
Akhlesh Lakhtakia
#30412
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Akhlesh Lakhtakia is Evan Pugh University Professor and Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of engineering science and mechanics at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on electromagnetic fields in complex materials, such as sculptured thin films, chiral materials, bianisotropy and industrially scalable bioreplication, an emerging form of engineered biomimicry applied to harvesting of solar energy and pest eradication. His technique for visualization of latent fingerprints was covered in the NOVA documentary series "Forensics on Trial".
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